A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  And about this time last year, Thaïle had kept Death Watch for Grammy, because the family was Gifted. So she had learned the old woman’s word of power. That had brought her Feeling and Feeling had spoiled everything.

  It was bad enough here at the Gaib Place, remote though it was. She could Feel what everyone in the district was feeling—love, anger, happiness, boredom, and stranger things, too. To go and visit the neighbors’ Places was torment, because the Feelings were stronger at close quarters, and she could not help but learn to recognize each person’s own Feelings. That made it all worse. Even from here, she knew when Looth made love to his wife, or Heem raged at his children. Sometimes at night she would be wakened by thunderclaps of passion from her father in the next room. They terrified and disgusted her, although they were not so nauseating as the underlying slithery hypocrisy of her mother’s acceptance. She’d always thought her mother was the loving one and her father stolid.

  Behind all the Feelings of the district lay a never-ending murmur of thousands of other Feelings from far away. Sometimes she thought she could Feel the whole world, all the people of Thume, and all the demons who lived Outside, as well.

  Today she had Felt the stranger coming and had run up to her secret place and crouched there for hours. She’d Felt her mother’s alarm begin when she’d detected the approach of the unknown, also. And then her father’s lower, slower emotions had turned to alarm, too.

  Her mother must have gone away, because her feelings had faded even as the stranger’s grew stronger. Thaïle had wished then that she had done what Frial had likely done, heading over the ridge to visit the Wide Place, or the Heem Place, or somewhere. She should not have stayed here at all.

  By the time her father’s sudden terror struck, she had become too paralyzed to do anything except hunker down as small as she could, like a baby bird in its nest. Then the stranger’s spite and anger had stopped abruptly, cut off all at once. That had been almost worse, because after that she could not place him—she was quite certain, somehow, that it was a man who was visiting the Gaib Place and he was still there.

  After a little while, she Felt pain from her father, real pain. She whimpered in sympathy. She had never known Gaib to react like that, even when he’d dropped the log on his toe last month and limped for days. No, no! What was the stranger doing to him? She began to pray—to the God of Places, the God of Mercy, the Keeper…

  Without warning, a blast of amusement surged over her, very strong, very close. Someone was laughing. Someone was extraordinarily happy about something. Her terror faded before it and she discovered that she was starting to smile in sympathy. Whatever could be so incredibly funny?

  “Thaïle!” cried an unfamiliar voice, not far off. “Thaïle, come out wherever you are!” The voice was full of the same laughter she had been sensing.

  Obviously it was the stranger, although how he could have come up from the cottage so quickly she could not imagine. He no longer Felt dangerous at all; the contempt and anger were all gone now. There was only that wonderfully reassuring hilarity. If she didn’t go out to him, then he might come looking for her. He was probably a sorcerer and could find her secret place if he wanted to. So there was no use refusing him.

  Thaïle wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, ran fingers through the tangle of her curls, and scrambled under the fallen tree that barred the exit—all legs and arms, like the climbing frog her mother called her sometimes.

  He was a slender, lanky man in green, sitting on a brown blanket, which he had spread in a sunlit spot below an airy acacia tree. He was laying out things on the blanket, and she stood behind a bush for a moment to watch. She saw plates and bowls, but she could not see where he was getting them from. The blanket, she realized, must be a cloak, for it had a fur collar and very few blankets had collars. She could feel a snigger coming on, like a need to sneeze.

  He raised his head and looked right at her. He waved an arm cheerfully. “Come on! I’m not going to hurt you!”

  Grinning shyly, she walked through the trees to his patch of brightness. He was really quite good-looking, she decided, with curly brown hair and extremely pointy ears. His clothes were beautiful and his smile melted all the prickly fears inside her.

  “Sit down, Thaïle. I’m Jain of the College.”

  “You’re a sorcerer!” She ought to be frightened out of her wits. She wondered why she felt so happy instead.

  He grinned. “Not quite. I’m only a mage—but that doesn’t matter just now. I expect you’re hungry? I know you’re hungry! So am I. How about some icy-cold orange juice to start with?”

  She sat down, tucking her legs as far out of sight as she could, because they were all scratched and dirty, and very skinny legs anyway. Her frock was torn and full of burrs. She drank from the shiny metal cup he gave her. It was astonishingly heavy. She wondered why she could not Feel anything from him, being so close, but all she sensed was that bubbling, laughing amusement, the sort of happiness you want to share with someone else. That was all. Funny! Most men put out scary want-you Feelings when they were near her, even quite young boys; and most male adolescents were unbearable at close quarters now, because of that. Although she hated to think of it, she Felt that want-you even from Wide, her sister’s man… and even her own father sometimes had traces of it. It was a man thing men couldn’t help, she’d assumed. So either this Jain sorcerer was not a normal man at all, or he was capable of hiding his real feelings from her.

  “You can speak, can’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

  He looked at her squarely. “Call me Jain. I want to be friends and you have absolutely nothing to fear from me. I’m a recorder, from the College. I’m not a monster. Not a freak. Just an ordinary sort of man. I have a Place of my own and a goodwife who shares it with me and I’m not going to do anything nasty at all. All right?”

  If he had a Place of his own, then why wasn’t he at home in it, growing something, as a man should?

  “What did you do to Gaib?” she muttered.

  Jain’s bony face grew sad. “He lied to me, Thaïle. He knew I’m a recorder, yet he told me lies. That’s forbidden by the Blood Laws, you know.”

  She nodded dumbly, aware of tiny veins of fear within her wanting-to-laugh feelings.

  “I punished him a little. Don’t worry; he’ll be all right. You won’t lie to me. And I won’t lie to you. I have to tell you some things. But first, eat up!”

  She looked over the dishes he had laid out and her mouth began watering so hard that she couldn’t have spoken anyway. There were bowls of fruit, steaming rice, juicy pork chops, bright vegetables—plus all sons of other things she couldn’t even identify. She stared at them, unable to believe that all this was just for the two of them.

  Jain was watching her with a wry smile. “Don’t know where to start, do you? Look, just for fun, try this first. It’s cake and I don’t suppose you’ve ever tasted anything like it in your life.”

  Cake, Thaïle decided quickly, was perfect bliss. She began to eat as if she had not eaten in a year or more.

  Jain himself nibbled on a fig, although it had to be a sorcerous fig at this time of year. It was all sorcerous.

  “You eat,” he said pensively, “and I’ll talk. First, I have to tell you some history. Maybe you’ve heard this, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. This lovely land of ours is called Thume, right? It lies between two lots of mountains—those up there, the Progistes, and the Qobles, far away. It has sea on the other two sides—big, big water. Over the mountains and over the seas live other people. You’ve heard of the red-haired demons and so on. Well, they’re not really demons, they’re just people, but they’re very violent people, most of them.”

  She nodded with her mouth full, to show that she was listening. Jain would be better looking if his eyes had more slant to them, she thought.

  “You Felt one of their battles, didn’t you?” he said. “Yes, I know about that. Don’t worry! The Keeper knows abou
t it, too. It was she who told me. There were thousands of men killed that day, at a place called Bone Pass. The dark-haired men killed the red-haired men, mostly.” He sighed and took another fig.

  Jain knew the Keeper herself! Thaïle almost choked when she realized that. She hadn’t known that anyone ever spoke with the Keeper. And she’d always thought the Keeper was a man.

  Jain did not seem to have noticed her surprise. “Often, in ancient times, these other races would bring their wars into Thume and then we pixies had to fight them to save ourselves from being killed or enslaved or brutalized in horrible ways. It happened over and over and over. And about a thousand years ago, there was a really terrible war. It’s known as the War of the Five Warlocks, but that’s just a name. It was started by a very great sorcerer named Ulien’quith. He was an elf, one of the golden-haired demons, and he had a whole army of other sorcerers to help him. Votaries, they’re called. Their enemies chased them here, to Thume, and Ulien made himself king of Thume, by sorcery. He made the pixies fight his enemies when they came after him.”

  Thaïle had thought that she’d drunk all the orange juice, but the golden cup was full again, so she took another drink. It was very strange to be eating all these wonderful things with a sorcerer. She wished Gaib and Frial were there to enjoy the meal, also. They had probably never seen its like in their lives. She knew she hadn’t.

  “Try this,” Jain muttered, pushing a golden plate over. “It was a very terrible war and we pixies got the worst of it, until we almost died out altogether. It wasn’t just armies that caused the trouble. Both sides used huge amounts of sorcery. There were dragons and storms of fire and monsters. Plagues of snakes. The ground opened and swallowed whole cities. Over there —“ He pointed toward her secret place. “— are ruins of a great castle. You can’t see anything now except the tumbled stones, but once it was a vast fortress.”

  His eyes twinkled, hinting that he knew of her secret place and knew she hadn’t guessed what it was made of.

  “The war went on for many years, until Ulien died. He was succeeded by a pixie, named Keef. Keef stopped the war and sent all the Outsiders away. Keef founded the College. Keef was the first Keeper!”

  Thaïle nodded again. She wondered what all this history had to do with her. It was sort of interesting, though, and oddly exciting, in a way she could not quite place.

  “Ever since then,” Jain said, “for a thousand years, there has been a Keeper at the College. The Keeper keeps the demons out—the other races out. We live in peace, here in Thume, because of the Keeper. You know all that, of course.”

  He stopped smiling for the first time since he’d started his lecture. “For example. That battle you Felt last year—the Keeper Felt it also. It didn’t concern her, or us. What the darks and the reds do to each other is their business. But a lot of the losers ran away into the mountains. Many died of wounds, or the cold, but a few days later the survivors started dribbling through the passes, down into Thume.”

  Thaïle paused with a piece of juicy mango halfway to her mouth.

  “Alarmed?” he said. “Yes, it should alarm you. There were hundreds of men, all starving and all armed. All violent men, warriors. If they’d had the chance, they would have brought death and rape… do you know what rape is?”

  She nodded quickly.

  And he nodded, also. “Even pixies do that, I’m afraid. But not often. Not like what would have happened… Anyway, the Keeper dealt with them. They never arrived in Thume, Thaïle. Not one. It’s not nice, but it’s necessary. Understand?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  Jain smiled again, comfortingly. “Well, that’s the bad side of the Keeper’s job. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often. Like to see some magic?”

  Not being sure she did, she said, “Isn’t all this food magic?”

  “Yes, it is. Of course it is. But I’m going to show you something—someone. About a month ago an imp… that’s the name for the dark-haired demons, or some of the dark-haired demons. This imp came wandering into Thume on his own. Actually on a horse, but not with anyone else.”

  He paused until she timorously asked, “Why?”

  Jain chuckled and wiped his fingers on the grass. “Just out of nosiness. Nobody Outside knows what happens in Thume. They know people disappear here, but they don’t know why. The Keeper’s power prevents them from finding out. And this man is an imp and imps are extremely inquisitive people. Worse than jackdaws, imps. So I’m told. Anyway, at the moment he’s about four or five days’ walk north of here, still riding his horse, exploring Thume. I’ll show you! Watch.”

  He pointed and a mist seemed to form within the trees where he pointed. Then there was a sunlit clearing there, where there hadn’t been a moment before, and a man on a horse, ambling along.

  She gasped and was about to jump up.

  “It’s all right,” the recorder said. “He can’t see you. He’s a long way away, really, like I said. That’s a demon for you.”

  She sank back to stare at the rider. His horse continued to plod, without ever going anywhere. The man was strumming on a lute, but she couldn’t hear any music—nor the horse’s hooves, she realized. The horse was heavy laden, the man lightly dressed in a bright-colored shirt and brown pants.

  The man looked very ugly, but not especially evil. He had black hair and a stubbly black beard. His nose was long and pointy, his ears small and rounded. He seemed chubby all over, and he sat in the saddle like a sack of yams. The strangest, ugliest thing about him was his eyes. They were shaped like melon seeds and set level, in a straight line across his face.

  “Ugh!” she said. “I don’t think I like demons.”

  Jain laughed. The vision faded away. “That one’s harmless enough. His name’s Uliopo, not that it matters. He’s a minstrel and a very bad one. He’s harmless.”

  She thought about that, eating a piece of cake she had missed earlier. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “That’s up to the Keeper, but she’s let him live this long, so I expect he’ll continue to go around in circles for another month or two and then arrive at where he wants to go.”

  “Circles?”

  Her companion laughed again, reaching for a tall silver bottle to pour himself a drink. “Yes. He came from the north and I think he wants to go south, but he’s been going round and round and round. He doesn’t know that. He hasn’t seen anyone at all, or any signs of people.” He peered quizzically at Thaïle over the rim of his silver cup.

  “The Keeper is playing games with him?”

  He chuckled. “I suppose so. The Keeper does what she wants and I don’t question her! I just wanted you to know that the Keeper is merciful sometimes.”

  Thaïle wiped her mouth on her arm. She could not have eaten another crumb. “Why do you want me to know that?”

  “Because you have Faculty.”

  That was what she’d been afraid of.

  The wanting-to-laugh feeling had gone, but she wasn’t frightened. Perhaps that was more magic, or else she’d accepted that this strange man wasn’t going to harm her. She still couldn’t detect any Feelings from him. Down at the Place, her father was still very unhappy, but her mother was hurrying back. That was good.

  “Listen,” Jain said softly. “I’m just like you. I was born at the Hoos Place, which you won’t ever have heard of, because it’s very far away, on the other side of Thume. My folks were just as poor as yours. Well, almost as poor—we did own an ox. My family is Gifted, like yours is, so when I began to warble and get fuzzy-lipped, I had to keep a Death Watch, as you did. An old man died, as Phain did, and told me his word of power, as she told you hers. I’d always had a talent of sorts and suddenly I was a genius with it—because I have Faculty. I have a Gift for occult power. As you do.”

  She studied him for a moment, then said, “What sort of talent? I didn’t have Feeling before.”

  “No. But you must have been a very sympathetic sort of person, keyed in to peopl
e’s moods. With a word of power, that became Feeling.”

  “What’s your talent?” she demanded, thinking he wanted her to ask.

  She’d been right—he grinned. “Lying! I’d always been a sly little beggar. After I got the word, I could talk anyone into believing anything! I could convince my dad the sky was green, if I wanted to.”

  To her astonishment, she was smiling back at him. “That doesn’t ’zactly give me lots of confidence in what you’re telling me, you know.”

  He chuckled. “I told you—I’m a mage now. Now I could make you believe it without actually saying anything.” He became serious again. “One word of power makes a genius of you. Two words of power makes an adept. That lets you be good at almost any mundane skill, a sort of superperson. Sometimes, if you have a real Faculty, you start to pick up some occult abilities then, too. I had found I had a fair insight. That means I could read people’s thoughts. Usually only a mage or a sorcerer can do that. Don’t worry—I rarely do.”

  She thought this had been one of the rare times, though. If he read that thought, he didn’t reply to it.

  “And three words make you a mage. I told you I’m a mage. I know three words. I can do magic, like showing you that imp. Probably I’ll be told a fourth word, when one becomes available. Four words make a full-blown sorcerer.”

  Thaïle noticed another piece of cake she had overlooked and decided she might just be able to squeeze it in. She was feeling that odd sort of excitement again.

  “And me?” she asked with her mouth full.